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Legacy in Light
Stained-glass windows illuminate couple’s enduring generosity
Galen and Sue Boatright are no strangers to expressing their love for the Lord – and for others. Over the last decade, this husband and wife of 63 years have donated money to various Baptist causes and ministries.
Just in the last three years alone, the Mustang, Oklahoma, couple has opened three charitable gift annuities with WatersEdge that will one day provide thousands of dollars of financial support to the Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children Boys Ranch Town and their home church, First Baptist Church Mustang, as well as other ministries.
A charitable gift annuity allows individuals to make a gift to ministry while receiving immediate tax benefits and guaranteed lifetime income. When their payments end, the remainder of the gift is placed in an endowment to benefit the ministries of their choice.
Not only have the Boatrights, who are in their early 80s, given generously from their wallets, but also from their talents, even if one of those talents was discovered a little later in life.
Galen and Sue Boatright.
The Boatrights have been members at First Baptist Mustang since 1989.
From curiosity to generosity
Creating stained glass has always been somewhat of a curiosity for Galen. He was in his mid-to-late 40s before he turned that curiosity into something tangible, taking three classes in this artistic pursuit. He soon discovered he excelled in this new-found hobby and wanted to share it with others, including his church family at First Baptist Mustang.
Not long after Galen and Sue joined FBC Mustang in 1989, the church began construction on their new worship center and preschool building. Because the new structures were built adjacent to the original auditorium, there was no longer any natural light coming through its windows, only light emanating from florescent bulbs workers installed in the window wells.
“You walked in that old auditorium and there were three gray concrete blocks with fluorescent lights shining on them in the middle of dark wood paneling. Can you imagine what that looked like?” Galen said.
Galen humbly approached then-pastor Bill Langley and volunteered to create stained-glass windows to cover up those concrete blocks.
“Since we were new members, I went to the pastor and said, ‘I don’t want people to think I’m coming in and decorating the building as a new member. You pick out the patterns and the colors, and I’ll build the windows.’ I gave him a booklet of windows, and he went through it and found what he wanted,” Galen said.
When completed, the fluorescent lights would shine through the stained-glass windows, providing a more-desirable atmosphere inside the old auditorium.
Pastor Langley chose three distinct window patterns: one with a cross, another an open Bible, and the third, a dove, depicting the Holy Spirit.
The bottom of each window contains letters from the Greek alphabet representing the “Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Rev. 23:13).
To make a stained-glass window, Galen explained he had to have two identical full-sized patterns from which to work. One he used to cut the glass by and the other to lay the cut pieces of glass on before the window is assembled.
When he began working on that first window with the cross, Galen said he heard a voice – not knowing if it was spoken audibly or in his spirit – that said, “It was your sins that put the blood stains on the cross.” He remembered looking down at the cut glass pieces he had just laid on the white paper pattern and saw what looked like blood running down the cross.
“At that point my eyes filled with tears, and I could not see to work,” he remembered. “So, I had to leave the garage where I was working and go into the house. It was three days before I could go back into the garage to work on the window.”
It took Galen – with some assistance from Sue – nearly three months to complete the three windows, sometimes working up to 12 hours a day.
It took more than a year to finish and install the Christmas-themed windows.
Discussions then turned to creating three stained-glass windows for the north side, specifically which theme and scenes would be depicted on each stained-glass window. A Christmas theme won out, with three different scenes depicting the shepherds, the manger, and the wise men.
“That was our Christmas gift to the church,” Galen said.
Word started getting out about FBC Mustang’s new stained-glass windows. Soon, other churches were calling to inquire about Galen’s handiwork. First Baptist Union City was one of those churches. Galen recalled that a representative from FBC Union City met him at FBC Mustang to view all six windows, finally choosing five for Galen to replicate at his church.
Around 35 years have passed since those stained-glass windows were first installed at FBC Mustang. The old auditorium is now the church’s youth center, but you can still find Galen’s artwork on display near the church’s main entrance and worship center entrance. And even though he no longer works with stained glass, he and wife Sue continue to serve God in other capacities, including supporting the various ministries with their charitable gift annuities from WatersEdge.
“I highly recommend anybody who’s looking for a good way to ensure their retirement, and they’ve got money to invest, invest it through WatersEdge, through something that will benefit the Lord and pay you dividends, too,” Galen said.
By Harve Allen
